Dodgy DIY

[mailbin]

So far, in this house I've found: CPCs wrapped under the heads of wood screws securing a plastic pattress box, dishwasher wired brown-to-black and blue-to-red, shelving supports fixed with 1/2" screws (barely in the plaster), door hinges secured with long BZP pozi screws that have the plain shank in the door frame, BZP posi screws everywhere, a kitchen extractor blowing into a capped chimney, a concealed shower mixer fitted without thought of how to service it (there's a leak!), a 13A socket connected to a ceiling rose, T&E run on catenary wires to sheds (signed off a year ago but the insulation had degraded so far it was falling off). Today I found that the spur to a double 13A socket runs in a rough channel in the concrete underneath a parquet floor. Sigh! I haven't checked yet but it's probably a spur from a spur. Fortunately there haven't been any structural "improvements". Please people, if you don't know what you're doing then don't do it!

I feel much better for that vent. I'm ready for my medicine now nurse ;-)

[newshound]

Which of us has not learned the error of our ways the hard way, having done at least one of the above.

[Clive Arthur]

Who are you and what are you doing in my Dad's house?

Cheers

[spuorgelgoog]

Likewise, but to a storage heater, in flex.

Owain

[Dave Plowman (News)]

You certain this was all DIY? I've seen the same and worse done by those being paid to do it.

[Tim Watts]

That's quite good. Normally they are twisted together outside of a round JB.

[Brian Gaff]

However nobody has yet died.

I think my favourite in this house was wall lights built at home using bits of old fresnel screens and hardboard, wired with ordinary mains two core flex down the wall just under the wallpaper in rough grooves in the wall and filled with plastic wood to make it almost flat. OK till you start too really scrape the wallpaper off and short out the flex, bang. Just finding where it was wired in was a bit of a job, seems to have been in a two pin plug and socket under the loose floorboard in the doorway held in by duct tape.

The ring main to the sockets had simply been cut and joined by a chock block for the earth and the two pin plug for the other two.

I guess back in the 60s nobody bothered too much about this sort of thing, plugging the electric iron into the ceiling lamp socket with an adaptor bought from Woolies. Brian

[Brian Gaff]

I suspect though that many people these days do not actually learn as they move out after doing their deeds. I have to say though that over many years lots of things we used to all do are now not allowed. Most of the wiring in this house though good and still sound is done with the older pvc red black and bare earth sleeved green wire. Its sound and works and will probably continue to work but I'd not want to try to find where some of it runs particularly between the main meter under the stairs to get to upstairs.

Brian

[Brian Gaff]

Underfloor heating that is called. Brian

[Chris J Dixon]

[]

Seriously curious, how would that be done?

Chris

[charles]

In our village hall, I had to work on the new extractor fan - couldn't find the isolator - so killed the RCD , The asked where the isolator was "Oh, it pluuged into an extension strip underneath the kicking board for the nearest cupboard."

[Nightjar]

I hope that is a satirical comment.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

My brother has countless stories like this about his church. And all the work has been done by accredited tradesmen.

[Dan S. MacAbre]

I'm just wondering what's wrong with BZP posi screws? Is there something fundamentally wrong with them? It's what I tend to pick because they don't rust over the years.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

How else would you do it? Don't think many would want surface mount pipes running round a shower.

Mine is in the wall between the bathroom and a separate toilet. So I mounted a mirror over the basin in that toilet so if I ever needed access to the connections to the shower I could cut a hole behind it.

[TimW]

Sometimes I find when you go to diy, it's good to start by turning off your worrying brain, tell yourself that it will all be fine no matter how slapdash, and that if builders do it it is easy and almost certainly foolproof. Then sleep soundly.

TW

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I suppose if you bodge something yourself it's not going to be a surprise if it causes problems. ;-)

[Dave Plowman (News)]

If only. Some seem to think a church an easy touch.

[Tricky Dicky]

I can empathise with the OP as our last house was left in a similar state. The previous owner was a painter and decorator who did a lot of contract wo rk and when he needed anything doing would get people he met in the course of his work to do foreigners. Every time we did any sort of improvements it usually involved putting right some botch up first and it never ceased to amaze me how these so called professionals could pass off the work they did as professional. In some cases doing the job right in the first place was easier than some of the botch ups! Its as if some of them could not help th emselves but include some sort of botch up.

I lost count of the number of "reinstatements" we did but some of the notab le ones were;

Plumbing:

1. Having so many pipes crossing joists close to each other the T&G floorin g could not be secured down.
2. Locating the CH pump under the floor so it was inaccessible.
3. Using drop feeds to radiators with no means of draining them thus causin g airlocks every time the system was re-filled.

Electrical:

1. Retaining the old rubber sheathed cable with the separate earth wire as the core wiring of the electrical system.
2. Replacing sockets and simply connecting the earths to the separate earth wire by twisting the conductor round the earth conductor instead of using crimps
3. Cotton covered rubber flex buried in the plaster to connect wall lights.
4. Sockets mounted on poorly fixed skirting resulting in the skirting movin g every time a plug was pulled out leaving the connecting wire rubbing so m uch the insulation was wearing away.

Building:

1. Removing a wall and supporting the upper wall on a RSJ but not replacing the brickwork between the joists thus leaving bricks in the air and when s kirting was replaced these bricks would simply fall into the void resulting in a lot of loose skirting.
2. Creating a new doorway through a load bearing wall with no lintel.
3. Plastering up to 2" thick on plasterboard.

You know how you see on comedy films like the Money Pit things like water c oming out of electrical sockets etc. We had something similar with gas comi ng out of a socket A back box was placed up tight against a buried gas pip e in the plaster, further along was a Tee-joint buried which corroded so th e gas leaked passed back along the buried pipe run before emerging from the socket. If I had the foresight I should have noted down all the other botc hes and written a book about how not to DIY. One potential botch up we neve r sorted was the previous owner removed a chimney breast in the lounge and to this day we never found out how the one in the bedroom above was support ed it was a case of it showed no movement or cracking and was a case of lea ve well alone.

Richard

[Andrew]

A spark has been fitting a new consumer unit for my semi-detached neighbour this morning. The noise was horrendous, sounded like he was demolishing a wall.

Got to talk to him later and he gave the usual bullshit about Wylex rewireable fuse boards being 'dangerous' and 'illegal' but he soon backed down when I corrected him.

She works for the council so he will be a 'council-approved' tradesman.

From what he was saying, it sounds like he has knocked a block or two out of the party wall (cavity wall with a 1 inch cavity) and inset the metal box (I'll check later) into it above the original wylex metal box which holds the company fuse, meter and the 8 rewirable fuses above it. This too is built into the party wall, back to back with mine, but what was acceptable in 1976 is no longeer the case. Surely insetting electrical stuff into a party wall is no longer allowed ?.

Mine in on the other side of the wall and there is a pad of heavy duty rockwool stuff separating them for soundproof purposes.

However, you can only re-plaster or chase out a party wall without contravening the party wall act, and he either doesn't know (fairly youngish chap) or didn't care.